Friday, August 30, 2013

You were probably going full speed at the time of the fall. And when you first fell, the sting felt like nothing you ever felt before. You felt like the pain would never go away. The tears would come uncontrollably. Your mom or dad would either come running due to the ear piercing shrieks and crying or you had to hobble and limp over to them. They would clean you up, put a band-aid on it and you would be back out playing again by the time the next hour passed.

Later when you saw your friends, grandparents or siblings, they would notice your scrape and they would ask what happened and you wore the war wound like a badge of courage. You would puff out your chest and say...yeah, it was pretty bad. But you were back out on the playground ready for more.

Recently, I ran into an old friend and she had skinned her knee and she mentioned "nice scraped knee, huh?" I laughed and thought to myself what is a better symbol of our youth than a skinned knee.

We had the carefree attitude to run with reckless abandon. And when we fell...we fell hard. It hurt. We probably vowed to ourselves never to run like that again. But we picked ourselves up (sometimes with the help of others), cleaned up the scrape and we were back at it.

As we get older, the skinned knees hurt more. The scars run deeper. But we need to pick ourselves up and do it again.

We need to remember the days of our youth. Not to live in the past but to learn to live because of the past.

Don't remember the skinned knee...remember the fun you had before the fall. And the fun you had after.